Airport Religion

I occasionally wonder if people who travel by plane have a different style than everyone else.

How would I describe airport travelers?

Fast-paced. Chic. Coffee-drinking. Rich. Affected. Glamorous. Cosmopolitan. Intellectual.

Is there something about an airport that influences people to behave this way? Hard to say. I myself am not even sure if my observations have come from watching others or myself.

My confession is this: I have styled myself in the very way I have described. I did this mainly in college, but at other times as well. You know the style I am referring to?

'Yes, yes, I must hurry to get to my gate. I (must appear as though I) have an important meeting to be at by six. Important people will be there. If you study my appearance you will find I (appear to) make a lot of money. But if you asked me to tell you the unfathomable salary I (seem to) make, I will scoff at its triviality. I am so tired and life is such a burden. (Have you seen my Oxford sweatshirt?)'

I admit there would be a comical aspect to this if (only if!) I were laughing at someone else. Unfortunately I merely recall my behavior and think, "How deplorable!".

I do not find it necessary to define the line I crossed. This would be like trying to determine at what point a joke becomes funny. By that I mean analysis often serves to deprive an act of its true significance.

But does anything else happen in an airport?

'Oh yes, I am familiar with such-and-such a region. I went to school there you know at such-and-such. You think Iraq should have been handled that way? Well here's my profound idea. Can you believe the incredible bravery of such-and-such a political party?'

The posturing, the speculating, the acting ... in a word, the deception. But who is more deceived?

A man dresses as to convince others he is a noted broadway performer. Are the people who mistake him for a celebrity deceived or is it somehow the case that he has effectively deceived his own self?

Let us set this peculiar question aside and perhaps examine another question. What if this airport posturing were taken to larger proportions?

I shudder to consider of a charity run by people in airports or an oligarchy run by the most stylized travelers.

What if the 'airport style' were made into a religion?

The first thing to be settled would be a religious text. Why not select a book commonly bought and shown off by airport travelers? Of course, the Da Vinci Code!

In the film version we find Tom Hanks (how famous!) playing the role of a prestigious scholar. He travels to the Lourve (how refined and cultural!). He gets into trouble, but it's okay because surely his brains will save him in the end. He teams up with a beautiful woman who must surely love him if he is as educated/cultured/famous as they make him out to be.


Now the Da Vinci Code -as I understand it- is a gnostic text. Gnosticism is essentially the worship of knowledge. Why do people worship knowledge? The answer is difficult for me to find until I consider my past experience in worshipping knowledge.

Lording it over others.

Yes, it is true that if you visit a university or mueseum or city hall you can find lawyers, curators, and professors who make it their supreme goal to let you know just how much they know.

But these men are ordinary know-it-alls in comparison to the walking "high brains" of the airports.

The end goal is to secure as much approval from others as possible. And many people do approve of Dan Brown, among them are the people who work at Sony Pictures. They love it that so many paying customers want to learn how to be snobby intellectual elites.

Dan Brown's 'interesting' and 'fashionable' views include how there were no miracles, heavenly action involves sexual promiscuity, and how earnest men and women at the monasteries are actually killers. Surely society will always be in debt to him.

In the past people thought about religion in terms of loving one another and the seriousness of death. These are the elements Dan Brown (and the gnostics) want to rescue us from.

There were no airports in the Bible, but there have always been men who associate with each other and attempt to boast and show off their accomplishments, their education, their wealth, their social status, etc.

One such group in Jesus' time was the Pharisees. My own view is that these people would have loved airport travel. Consider the following passage from Matthew 23:

"Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them 'Rabbi'."

The aspect I hate the most about the Pharisees is simply this: they remind me of everything I hate about myself.

Indeed they highly valued the approval of other people, and the more they valued the crowd's opinion, the less they approved of and valued their own lives. I believe this is what Jesus was referring to when he said, "... but inside they are full of dead men's bones."

To that extent I can identify most definitely with the Pharisees. I say to myself, "Surely I walked in the counsel of the wicked! I have stood in the way of sinners! I have sat in the seat of mockers!".

The final aspect I present about the airport religion is its doctrine of restlessness. People in the airport are always, always in a hurry.

According to Jesus the Pharisees traveled over land and sea (I'm sure they would have preferred air travel) to win a single convert, and when they did this he became twice as much a son of hell as they were.

Although a man who loves God may travel often (as did the Apostles) he is, in another sense, grounded like a tree planted by streams of water. He does not long to be some place else.

This is the calling God has put on every person dissatisfied with the religion of this world. When a person finds the life Christ has to offer, he may in one sense hunger, but in another sense he will never hunger again.

In conclusion I see no inherent problem with air travel. The problem only introduces itself when a person becomes more worried over his or her appearance than having an actual self.

How much better to choose an actual self ... and to love others as they are.